$35 Home Theater-Friendly Raspberry Pi PC To Start Shipping Soon

The delay of the Raspberry Pi PC has had geeks hankering for some serious on-the-cheap computing action pulling out their hair in frustration. The charity foundation offering the $25/$35 Pi has been teasing us with videos of its awesomeness for months, showing off the PC's chops at playing 1080p video and Quake 3, shifting media via AirPlay technology, running XBMC and loads more. Unfortunately, the Pi missed its initial launch window. But don't worry: the Raspberry Pi foundation just committed to a new manufacturing date and even released a datasheet for the Broadcom SoC powering the Pi.

The first round of 10,000 Raspberry Pi PCs are set to finish manufacturing in China on February 20th. After that, they'll be shipped to the U.K, where the foundation hopes to start shipping out orders by the end of February. The reason for the delay? The quartz crystals used in the Pi were readily abundant in England, where the PC was designed, but a newer, cheaper crystal had helped to dry up supplies of the component in China. The team reports the problem is now taken care of and everything is ready to go.

The foundation also coaxed Broadcom into releasing a 205 page datasheet detailing nitty-gritty about the BCM2835 SoC that supplies the brawn for the Raspberry Pi. Dive in here (PDF) if you want, but be warned: the water's deep, dense and difficult to swim through if you don't know the tech inside and out.